Orkut to be closed down in September 2014

Orkut was one of the pioneers of social networking which has now taken over the web. Orkut was named after Google employee Orkut Buyukkokten, who was the creater of the site. Orkut was launched in 2004, same as Facebook, and in the beginning it showed tremendous growth and promise. However, as Facebook gained popularity, Orkut soon declined.

By 2010, Orkut has lost its footing all over the world except for Brazil and India where people continued to use the site quite widely. According to Google, 20% of Orkut users are Indians and 50% are Brazilians. But even here they have lost the fight. By 2010 Facebook already had more registered users in India then Orkut, and by 2012 the same thing happened in Brazil.

Orkut had sunk so low in popularity that Google had to launch Google+ to stay in the social networking game. Every month nearly 300 million people visit Google+ site. However, Google+ is more of a hub of information for individual users and less of a social network in the lines of Facebook.

As of Monday Orkut will not be accepting any more new registrations and will be shut down permanently on Septembar 30 this year. Google assured that existing Orkut users can carry on using their account till then. Existing users can use Google Takeout to export profile data, community posts and photos. Google will archive all the public communities in Orkut and they will be available from Septembar 30. If any user doesnot wish for their posts to be included in the archive, they can remove Orkut permanently from their Google Account.

Google apologized to existing Orkut users and added that the company will focus on making its other social networking platforms better.